White Collar Crime not so dirty

PwC’s Global Economic Crime Survey shows that Russia’s corporate business sector is improving with less crime being reported than since 2007.

John Wilkinson from PWC’s Forensic Services says the turmoil in the peak of crisis led to a number of failures in security and compliance departments as “ the opportunity was greater, because there was less monitoring, the motives were greater in 2009 because everybody was struggling to meet targets, to get their bonuses,”According to PwC’s Global Crime Survey more than a third of Russia’s 126 leading companies reported being victims of some financial crime in 2011. It’s a significant decrease from 2009 when 71% say their companies were victims. Wilkinson says a reduction in the rate of detection of fraud or a change in the willingness of organisations to report maybe the case. “We believe that detection works have actually dropped in last two years as well. The organisations have to do more to make sure that they are looking because the ones that do look –they find.”The report mentions that the most common type of corporate crime is asset misappropriation with 72% reported to have detected this type of crime in their companies, while 40% of respondents mentioned bribery and corruption as major crime in their company.At the same time 7% of respondents mentioned that losses from fraud ran to over $100 million which is ten times more than the  global average of 0.6% according to PwC.